OTTAWA - A prestigious group of former world leaders and experts is sounding the alarm about a water crisis that threatens peace, political stability and economic development around the globe.

The InterAction Council has issued a new report warning that the future impact of water scarcity could be devastating.

The report comes as foreign ministers from a number of countries prepare for a special discussion of the water crisis later this month on the margins of the UN General Assembly.

The report doesn't call for specific action by the UN.

But former Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien, who co-chairs the council, says the group is trying to raise awareness of the urgency of the crisis in hopes that the Security Council will recognize water as a top security concern facing the planet.

"We want to alert the Security Council that there's a major problem," Chretien told reporters on a teleconference call Monday.

Zafar Adeel, director of the UN University's Institute for Water, Environment and Health, said the Security Council has never focused specifically on water security.

The report, prepared in conjunction with the Hamilton-based institute and the Toronto-based Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation, says 4,500 children die every day because of diseases related to unsafe drinking water and lack of sanitation.

And the problem, it warns, will only get worse.

With an additional billion people on the planet by 2025, another trillion cubic meters of water will be required each year — equivalent to the annual flow of 20 Niles or 100 Colorado Rivers.

In less than 20 years, the demand for water is expected to exceed supplies in India and China, the world's two most populous countries.

And the effects of climate change will result in droughts in some parts of the planet, flooding in others.

The report predicts conflicts in future may well erupt over scarce water supplies, in particular in already unstable regions like the Middle East and Africa.

"As some of these nations are already politically unstable, such crises may have regional repercussions that extend well beyond their political boundaries," says former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland in a foreword to the report.

"But even in politically stable regions, the status quo may very well be disturbed first and most dramatically by the loss of stability in hydrological patterns."

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5 Ways To Save Water

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If you only have five minutes to spare, Ryan Mulligan recommends cutting back on your showers. "Take shorter showers. Most people think they won't have enough time but try taking a shower under five minutes," he says. On average, if you take a five minute shower everyday for a month, you can save up to 3,800 litres of water in your household.

Drip. Drip. Drip. That annoying sound of dripping water that wakes you up in the middle of the night could be wasting about 90 litres of water, according to Mulligan. In five hours, try fixing all your leaks around the house or install a water-saving faucet.

Try a vegetarian dish! A week is a lot of time to save water and for five days, Mulligan thinks we should be thinking bigger. "Go meatless for five days. From start to finish, it takes a lot of water to grow crops that feed animals to cleaning meat before you eat it," he says. A piece of steak for example, from start to finish, can use up to 7,000 litres of water.

Five weeks gives you enough time to update key areas in your home. Get a rain water barrel and use collected rain water to water your garden and plants, Mulligan says. He also recommends letting your grass grow a little longer before mowing the lawn to avoid over-watering your greens.

In five months, there's a lot you can do to save water. For starters, putting a brick into your toilet tank can increase your tank's water level and decrease the amount of water that's being used during flushing, Mulligan says. His team also encourages Canadians to dig a little deeper into the impacts of water in developing countries and read a little bit more about how scarce and limited water is for many countries.